Biological Sciences at CSN

Current Article:

Sept 19

There are 200 million cases of malarial infections a year. With mosquitoes becoming more resistant to insecticides, a new transgenic fungus genetically engineered with a spider venom gene has potential to help in this crisis. How did they make it? How effective is it? Will they be able to release it in the wild? Let's talk about it!

Transgenic Metarhizium rapidly kills mosquitoes in a malaria endemic region of Burkina Faso

Past articles from this semester:

Sept 5

C-type asteroids are rich in organic compounds, including many of the precursors of life. Four and a half years ago the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, launched the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to the carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu. Its extremely complex mission: Travel to the asteroid. Obit and map it. Deploy four rovers. Land. Fire a projectile to collect a sample of surface material that's been exposed to space. Take off. Deploy a shaped-charge explosive to bore a deep hole. Back away. Deploy a camera to watch the explosion. Back farther away, behind the asteroid to dodge debris. Fire the explosive. Return. Map the new hole. It's done all this! Next up: Land and collect pristine sub-surface material exposed by the explosion. Take off again. Return to Earth, leaving December of this year and reaching Earth December of next year. Deploy a sample-return capsule to enter Earth's atmosphere and land in Australia while the main spacecraft goes on to another asteroid. We'll be looking at three brief papers detailing what we've learned so far. There's a summary page, " Traveling to the origins of the Solar System," accompanying the papers.

Summary Page - Traveling to the origins of the Solar System Asteroid - data from the Hayabusa2 mission support collisional evolution of a pristine body